


Homesick

by sweeterthankarma



Series: SKAM Fic Challenge August 2020 [20]
Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), College/University, Dorks in Love, Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mild Angst, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:54:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26281504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweeterthankarma/pseuds/sweeterthankarma
Summary: Being in Oslo again feels like a breath of relief, like peace, or at least it should. It doesn’t, though. Not quite yet.
Relationships: Even Bech Næsheim/Isak Valtersen, Sana Bakkoush & Even Bech Næsheim, Sana Bakkoush & Isak Valtersen, Yousef Acar/Sana Bakkoush
Series: SKAM Fic Challenge August 2020 [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867486
Comments: 12
Kudos: 71





	Homesick

**Author's Note:**

> For thirty one days, I'll be writing and posting SKAM fics inspired by the prompts listed [here](https://www.writerswrite.co.za/31-writing-prompts-for-august-2020/). These fics will be anywhere from 100-1,000 words approximately, will be for different characters and relationships, canon and non-canon, within the original Norwegian SKAM universe. All fics will stand alone. Check out the prompt list and let me know if you have any ideas for what you'd like me to write on a specific day!
> 
> Day 20 Prompt: Dread.
> 
> This was my first time writing Sana's POV and Sana/Yousef and clearly I have a lot of feelings about them since this is the longest fic in this series so far! I definitely went far above my own personal parameters for word count but oh well, I didn't feel like stopping once I started. I'm terrible at limiting myself anyway and when it comes to Yousana and Evak, why should I?

Sana doesn’t think she’s ever seen so much white. 

The snow comes down quick and heavy outside of Gardermoen International Airport. There’s a joke hiding in there, waiting to be made about the fact that there’s more white inside the building than out, and if Sana were a different person, someone who found humor based on skin tone and ethnicity to qualify as legitimate entertainment worthy of even half-hearted chuckles, she’d crack it. Not that there’s anyone to crack it with right at this moment. 

She stands alone, back pressed to the glass of the window, her fingers clutched around the handles of her suitcases. Cold wind bristles against her cheeks, turning them pink. Isak is inside, getting the last of his luggage from the baggage claim that mixed things up and almost left him without all of his things. Nothing was easy today. Nothing has been easy in a while, if Sana’s honest. Being in Oslo again feels like a breath of relief, like peace, or at least it should. It doesn’t, though. Not quite yet.

Sana checks her phone again. Settled dread grows in the pit of her stomach when she taps her phone and sees nothing on the screen. Yousef hasn’t answered her texts. Yesterday, he’d said that he’d be here, right at 20:00. It’s 20:35 now, and she hasn’t heard a single thing from him. He didn’t even call before her flight took off. Her phone battery, usually drained by Yousef’s constant messaging, has stayed at a steady eighty four percent all day, despite the six plus hours of music streaming that had entertained her over the course of the flight and the bland neutrality of airplane mode. 

The pilot had told them upon landing that the electricity is out across sections of the city, close to his home.  _ Their _ home, now—  well, sort of. Sana hasn’t considered Oslo to be home in over a year and a half.

It’s not like she really wanted to leave in the first place, but the grad school program was just too great of an opportunity to pass up. And Belgium was great, it really was; busy and bustling and different but still the same in ways that gave Sana comfort, it made her feel like wherever she was in the world, she’d find peace in the familiarity of being alive. 

That idea didn’t hold up. She grew homesick, has been homesick for far too long.

Even had money to visit Isak, and Isak had money to visit Even. Sana lived on her own, in an apartment that barely fit her, much less anyone else—  and certainly not Isak, who owns more snapbacks and hoodies than any person ever should. Sana jokes that he could fill a whole room with them, and each time they go to the mall, he buys more as if solely out of spite. 

So he stayed on his own, sharing a place with a friend he’d made early on in the program, while Sana cooked and cleaned and studied, worked her part time job and juggled two internships and obtaining her Master’s degree. It was so much all the time; a lifestyle that offered her barely any time to do anything but sleep and occasionally sightsee if she had enough money to spend on train fare. She really can’t blame Yousef for only visiting her twice. Maybe the blame is on herself.

_ It’s no one’s fault, _ Sana reminds herself, then checks her phone again. No texts, no calls.  _ There’s no blame in the first place. This is just how life was, how it is.  _

“Sana!” a familiar voice calls out to her, accompanied by the strident honking of an old car horn. Sana’s heart jolts in her chest, makes her almost jump out of her skin.  The snow is pale, too thick to be translucent, but through  through the fuzzy, flickering haze she sees a familiar car pull up in front of her— definitely in an illegal parking zone— and an icy window roll down to expose someone Sana’s used to seeing through Isak’s pixelated Skype screen.  _ Even. _

A grin breaks out across Sana’s face and she rushes to his car, then turns around to grab her multiple suitcases that she’d left behind in her haste. She’s too small, not strong enough to carry them all on her own, and just when she’s about to turn to ask Even for some assistance he wraps her up in his arms, already there beside her.

Sana hasn’t been hugged like this in a long time. Even is tall, warm from the heat of his car, and the softness of his maroon scarf, one she recognizes as belonging to Isak, brushes against her cheek as his hands rub along her back.

She’s missed him. She’s missed home. 

“How are you?” Even asks, his voice muffled from her own oversized coat, and she’s honest when she replies, “tired.”

“I’ll bet,” Even replies, and he bounces on the balls of his feet when he pulls away and gives her a once over. “You look beautiful! Grown up, definitely smarter, I can see it in your eyes.” 

Sana chuckles. “Oh yeah, what about in the lines on my forehead? I feel like I’ve aged sixteen years in sixteen months.”

Even doesn’t have a chance to answer her, to even really laugh at her or congratulate her on completing the first half of her program because all of a sudden, Isak is barreling into him. He moves so hard and fast and so out of nowhere that Even almost knocks over two of Sana’s bags thanks to Isak’s force. His hands frame Even’s face, kissing him hard as Even envelops him in an unwavering embrace.

Sana shouldn’t be sad. She knows Yousef is still hers, that no distance could change what they have or make them drift apart too far to find their way back. But still, something doesn’t feel right. It’s cold out. The city is dark, everyone is frantic over the weather. It’s a miracle she and Isak’s flight didn’t get canceled, and by the looks of their surroundings— two different cars struggling to move forward, to get out of a snow pile and shift into gear— it probably should have. 

Isak’s tongue is in Even’s mouth, his hands grabbing at his hair, putting on a show. Sana has to look away.

If she’s being honest, it’s been a long time since she’s kissed Yousef, whether it be in the most chaste way or in the way that Isak and Even are kissing each other right now. It almost makes Sana angry. She knows it shouldn’t, but Isak and Even had this a lot easier than she and Yousef did. The distance wasn’t much of a problem given Even’s willingness to travel— or rather, the money that he had that allowed him to do so. They never seemed to have any fights, in person or when apart. Isak’s dad sent money every month, and Isak’s mom even ended up visiting him, bringing Jonas in tow for a surprise visit. Though Isak and Sana had the same biology scholarship, the same numbers and formal, yet impersonal words printed on a piece of paper awarded to them, somehow everything was so much easier for Isak.

_ That’s how it seems, _ Sana tries to remind herself. She knows they’ve all got their own struggles, as everyone does, and she knows that there’s so much about Isak’s life that she doesn’t know, that he doesn’t let on about. It’s hard to remember sometimes, though. And besides, what she said to Even wasn’t a lie. She’s exhausted. 

She watches Isak and Even, still peppering each other with kisses and looking at each other like they’re the only thing in the whole world that matters, and Sana checks her phone again. A text from Noora lights up her screen. Not what she wants. She thinks about calling Yousef, and doesn’t know why she doesn’t. Doesn’t know why she’s almost afraid to. 

It’s been a long time since she’s seen him. Too many questions flood her mind, rational and otherwise: what if he’s changed? What if she’s changed? What if he doesn’t want her anymore? What if they don’t work the way that they used to, don’t have the same camaraderie and banter and connection that they did before? What if he met someone new? Or worse, what if he’s stranded in the storm, in an accident, injured or worse?

“He’s probably stuck in traffic,” Even supplies when Sana finally voices her concerns aloud, maybe twenty minutes later. They sit inside Even’s car, idling in the same spot he had parked in before, and Sana’s head moves as if on a swivel, searching for Yousef’s vehicle in the onslaught of headlights coming their way.

Sana’s called him three times now, and Isak and Even have too. Sana’s not worried about all of the first few fleeting, unrealistic thoughts that were in her mind before, about their relationship being strained or hardened; all she cares about is knowing that he’s safe, that he’s okay, that he’s alive. 

She bites back tears, her faded lipstick pressing against her teeth. She doesn’t know why she’s so scared all of a sudden, but no matter what she does, she can’t shake the thought. She calls Yousef again, gets no answer, and just when she’s about to thank Isak for his former offer about staying at their place tonight, to tell Even to take them there, she sees him. 

It’s just a glimpse, just a tiny moment that Sana almost thinks she imagines, but before she can question it, she’s out of Even’s car and slipping through the snow in her boots, rushing through the automatic doors and unapologetically bumping into people as she heads left, veering in the direction of where she saw him. 

She knows it was him. It had to be him. She’d recognize that jacket anywhere, know the curve of his jaw like the back of her hand, see that sliver of his face that she saw for even just one millisecond and go after him. It’s him. It’s Yousef. He’s here. He’s okay.

Sana calls his name far louder than she should, but he’s far away and almost out of sight and he’s turning away and she can’t let him go, can’t chase him down any more even though she knows they’ll eventually find each other again in this maze of a building, even if it takes all night. 

But Yousef hears her and he spins around, and just like that, Sana’s home.  _ Really _ home this time.

She’d scoffed a little at Isak and Even before, at the way they threw themselves at each other like Even hadn’t been in Brussels last month, but she gets it now. If anything, she and Yousef are worse than they were, not even shadowed in night sky and street lights. Now, they’re in the wide open fluorescent light of the airport lobby, the rest of the passing pedestrians be damned. 

Sana weeps into his jacket. Yousef smells like spice and sandalwood, like soap and snow, and his hair is damp where it brushes against her forehead. She kisses him and breathes him in, asks him where he’s been and why he didn’t answer his phone and what happened without including a single pause, and she knows that later Yousef will mock her for this.

“You’re a sap, Bakkoush,” he’ll say like he has so many times in the past. His eyes are always knowing, admiring, truthful. “A hopeless romantic, no matter how much you try to deny it.”

When he brings it up this time, Sana doesn’t think she’ll even protest. 

“I’ve been here for hours looking for you,” Yousef tells her, just as breathless as she is. Sana’s sure she looks a mess, makeup smudged and hijab mussed and tear stains on her cheeks, but she doesn’t really care. She holds Yousef’s hands tight in hers, and she’s okay. 

“Your lovely brother dropped my phone out of a window last night,” Yousef tells her, and all of Sana’s love turns into anger and then to humor. Elias isn’t going to hear the end of this.

“I wanted to borrow his phone to text you, but he went to work before I could.” 

Sana shuts him up with another kiss. She doesn’t need to know anything else.

Later, right before the four of them all finish catching up and end up heading home, Isak will text Sana a photo he snapped through the airport window, a faintly blurry capture of her and Yousef bundled up in each other, frozen in time.

He’ll expect her to groan, to tell him not to spy on her and that the moment wasn’t as Hallmark movie-esque as it seemed, but when it happens, Sana doesn’t protest at that either. Instead, she says thanks, quietly saves it to her camera roll, and scoots closer to Yousef, arm looped through his. 

It’s good to be home.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, please let me know! Comments and kudos make my day. 
> 
> Come say hi at my Tumblr blog [here!](https://sweeterthankarma.tumblr.com/)


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